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UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE 

COUNTRY SCHOOLS AND 
RURAL SANITATION 

SIX SAMPLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ONE COUNTY 

DOES THIS COUNTY NEED MEDICAL INSPECTION 
IN ITS SCHOOLS? 

THE COUNTRY SCHOOL TEACHER 



BY 



CH. WARDELL STILES 

] rofessor of Zoology, Hygienic Laboratory 
United States Public Health Service 



REPRINT NO. 116 

FROM 

PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS 
February 7, 1913 



(Edition of October 21, 1913) 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1913 






% 



n. OF D. 
JAM 10 1914 



4 



*\ 



COUNTRY SCHOOLS AND RURAL SANITATION.^ 

SIX SAMPLE PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ONE COUNTY. DOES THIS COUNTY NEED MEDICAL 
INSPECTION IN ITS SCHOOLS? THE COUNTRY SCHOOL TEACHER. 

By Oh. "Wardell Stiles, Professor of Zoology, Hygienic Laboratory, United States Public Health Service. 

The town of A , county of Z , has about 1 ^000 inhab- 
itants. It boasts of an excellent brick school building with 9 
teachers. There are two privies back of the school and within short 
fly-flying distance to several houses. Neither privy is sanitary and 
both have been in fllthy condition the several times I have seen them. 
The food of the near-by families is supplied, by flies, with fecal mate- 
rial from these two privies. Consider the possible results of the 
presence of a typhoid carrier among the pupils. 

The settlement of B is only a few miles distant from A . 

There is a two-room school there which is in good condition and well 
painted. Two privies are present, but both are so filthy that they 
would naturally prejudice the children against privies in general. 
There is a driven well, with pump, in front of the school; the water has 
hollowed out the ground and forms a muddy puddle in which hogs 
wallow and children wade — for instance, after visiting the privies; 
the washer of the pump is so poor that it is often necessary to pour 
in water in order to start the flow. For this purpose water is dipped 
from the muddy puddle in which the children have been wading 
and the hogs wallowing. This pump furnishes the drinking water to 
about 60 children and 2 teachers. 

A small village, C , is located 2 miles farther on with about 

150 inhabitants. (No person in town, including the mayor, could 
give me an estimate of the number of inhabitants.) Upon inquiring 
here for a privy, one of my assistants was informed that there was none 
ia town for men except [a miserable] one near the church. The 
school, however, has two privies. Both of these are within short fly~ 
flying distance to two houses which take boarders, including traveling 
transients. 

About 3 to 4 miles farther on is a rural school, D , with 

about 30 pupils. There is no privy present, but the boys go down 
the road in one direction, the girls up the road in another. 

About 2 miles farther along the railroad is the town of E -, 

with about 600 inhabitants. There is a school with 1 male and 3 
female teachers and about 200 enrolled children. AAlien I first 

: Reprint from Public Health Reports, Vol. XXVIII, No. G, February 7, 1913. 
79259—13 (3) 



visited this school (the week before it opened for its fall term) there 
was no privy either for the boys or the girk. The boys went down 
one fork of the road, the girls the other. The school building was 
open and the passing public was using the upper room— intended 
for the higher classes — as a public privy. Several women in town 
informed me that they had repeatedly urged that privies be provided 
for the 200 boys and girls at this school. Eecently the school has 
been provided with two privies. 

About 2 miles farther is another school, F , with about 30 

pupils and 1 young woman teacher. The pupils have an abundance 
of hookworm disease, but no school privy. 

The foregoing observations were made since August 15, 1912. 
They are published herewith without comment, except for the remark 
that the county in question is by no means exceptional. The schools 
represent American rural education — namely, teaching the American 
rural children how to live. 

The country school teacher. — If a county superintendent of educa- 
tion gives an address before a State convention he does not seem to 
feel that he has done his full duty (judging from a number of meet- 
ings that it has been my privilege to attend within the last few years) 
imless he says something about the inefficiencies of the country school 
teachers, the few years during which they remain in the work, and 
the fact that many of them teach simply in order to earn money for 
their wedding trousseau. 

While I would not for a moment presume to be capable of debating 
with the gentlemen in question, it is difficult to escape the impression 
that theirs is not the only point of view in the premises. Many years 
of field work in the rural districts have given me an opportunity to 
see a great many rural schools and their teachers, and as a practical 
sanitarian I take the libertj^ of presenting for consideration a side of 
the problem which I have not yet heard county superintendents 
emphasize in their convention addresses. 

First of all, the point so often made that these young women teach 
but a few years and then marry might well be interpreted as meaning 
that the}^ are of such a high standard that they are in great demand 
as wives — an interpretation which should be heartily indorsed. 

Certain it is that the average young woman has few inducements 
offered to her to remain a teacher in the many country schools I 
have seen. As a rule, she leaves a home which is superior to the 
homes of the parents of her pupils in which she is forced to board if 
she lives in the community where she teaches. She is paid a miserable 
salary as reward for exposing herself five days a week to indecent and 
insanitary conditions surrounding the school which jeopardize and 
occasionally end either her health or her life. She is blamed by her 
patrons for not giving a bette^" education than she succeeds in giving. 



to unhealthy children who on an average are not physically or 
mentally capable of digesting the education she does give to them. 
She has little or no sympathy from her school board in regard to the 
difficulties that she faces. If she suggests improvements in the sani- 
tary surroundings, her suggestions usually fall upon deaf ears. She 
is superior in education, refinement, culture, and in nearly every other 
respect, to the majority of parents in the community in which she 
teaches. She lives a life of self-sacrifice, too often combined with 
indigestion and pimples, because of the class of food she is forced to 
eat. If she sends home from school a pupil who has the itch or in 
whom she suspects some contagious disease, she is blamed for her 
officiousness ; if she contracts the disease herself, she furnishes a 
substitute at her own expense.^ 

But she is the greatest civilizing influence to-day in our rural dis- 
tricts and is deserving of much more sympathy and support ^nd of 
much less criticism than she is receiving. 

Without denying that a more pedagogically trained class of teachers 
might be obtained if they were paid better salaries, I venture to sug- 
gest to their critics that they will probably be able to retain their 
young women a year or two longer if they improve the present inde- 
cent and insanitary conditions under which these young women have 
to work to a point where the girls can teach without endangering 
their health and lives; and these teachers will certainly have better 
success in their pedagogic efforts if the sanitary conditions surround- 
ing the schools are improved to a point where the country school will 
not form — what it is to-day — the great disease-spreading center for 
rural and semirural communities. 

In conclusion, I can not refrain from mentioning what may be 
admitted to be an extreme and somewhat exceptional case: A young 
woman from a town contracted to teach in a rather remote country 
school. She was advised to engage board with the family of the 
chairman of the local school board and did so before leaving home. 
Upon arriving at her destination she was shown into the one-room 
house, containing five beds, and was asked which bed she preferred 
to occupy. 

All honor to our country school-teachers, who are to-day the 
greatest factors for good in our rural districts. 

1 For instance, two of the three young women teaching in the rural school where I am 
studying the children, the day this short article is written, have just contracted itch from 
their pupils and have the honor of paying a substitute. There is no medical inspection of 
the children, and the teacher was blamed for sending home a boy infected with scabies, 
but sentiment would be distinctly against the teachers if they themselves were known to 
attend school when they had this infection. 



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